Events

Cleantech Forum 2017: Water Executive Summit

In a mini-Summit format – fast-paced, discussion-based, and intimate – the Cleantech Group is setting out to identify what the current and emerging opportunities might be; whether water can be a beneficiary of the new US administration’s commitment to infrastructure spend and a push for jobs; and whether water can shake off its “red-headed stepchild” status in the “cleantech” portfolio and emerge in the 2020s as a star performer, by making positive impact in planetary terms and in realized investor returns.

Hosted within the 15th Cleantech Forum San Francisco, our “conversation starters” are speakers/panelists who help spark the discussions. We actively encourage people not just to come and listen, but to contribute and participate. All can speak. The Summit is deliberately sized and intimately-formatted to encourage interaction, informality, and collaborative idea-sharing.

Seats can be requested by registered Forum attendees, with a set number of places to be available for those who wish to attend only this part of our Forum. Contact the Cleantech Group at forums@cleantech.com today for more information.

WaterBuild 2017

Greenbuild is the world’s largest conference and expo dedicated to green building. The green building community gathers to share ideals and mutual passion at Greenbuild, sparking a contagious buzz throughout the week. When industry leaders, experts and frontline professionals dedicated to sustainable building in their everyday work come together, the result is a unique and palpable energy. Participants are invigorated and inspired. They find themselves equipped to return to their jobs with a renewed sense of purpose. Greenbuild features three groundbreaking days of inspiring speakers, invaluable networking opportunities, industry showcases, LEED workshops and tours of the host city’s green buildings. Join thousands of other people who agree that green building is a good idea and good for business.

Following on its inaugural event in 2016, WaterBuild 2017 will convene the designers, operations managers and policy leaders integrating water into green building. More information here.

WaterBuild: The US Green Building Council’s Inaugural Water Conference

The US Green Building Council inaugurated its first water conference at GreenBuild 2016, the seminal annual event for green building in the US, with a day of discussions for architects, engineers and policy leaders. The WaterBuild Summit was designed to inspire and facilitate discussion on water in the context of the built environment. The Summit convened a multi-stakeholder group for dialogue, knowledge sharing and problem-solving to address water issues such as scarcity, quality, efficiency and site water management. Two highlights were

Artemis has been proud to serve on the event advisory board. More info is available here.

Reimagining the Cadillac Desert

Date: September 15, 2016
Location: Los Angeles, CA

In “CadillacDesert,” Marc Reisner wrote that, if it weren’t for dams and hundreds of miles of aqueducts providing water to barren land, “the West as we know it would not exist.” The book masterfully chronicled how early settlers used innovation, imagination and federal dollars to transform the West, turning desert into rich agricultural land and residential oases.

The next chapters are now unfolding in real time. Faced with a historic drought and a growing population, Californians and all westerners must again call upon their creative and resilient nature to reimagine our CadillacDesert. What will our homes, cities, farms and landscaped space look like? How will we get, use, retain and reclaim water? Who will pay for it? What role will technology play? Reisner wrote that one doesn’t conquer the West, one makes an uneasy truce with it. The question before us is: What will our newest truce with the land look like?

Best, Best and Krieger convened experts in architecture, agriculture, policy, finance, and technology who are alreadyreimaginingtheCadillacDesert to share their visions for the West’s water future from Bill Patzert (JPL), Pat Mulroy (Brookings Institute), Jeff Kightlinger (Metropolitan Water District), Mark Gold (UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability) to Hadley Arnold (Arid Lands Institute) and Laura Shenkar (Artemis Water Strategy).

Microgrid Islanding for Water/Wastewater & Other Critical Facilities

Artemis Principal Laura Shenkar joined Iraj Graemi, Director, Facilities Development, San Diego Regional Airport, and Byron Washom, Director of Energy Initiatives, University of California at San Diego to examine how the first microgrids are integrating water and sanitation in “Microgrid Islanding for Water/Wastewater & Other Critical Facilities” at the Commercial & Government Microgrids Summit. The markets for microgrids, energy storage and distributed energy enabling technologies are projected to grow rapidly to a $26 billion (B)/5.9 gigawatts (GW) annually by 2020, backed by a myriad of markets and applications. The Summit provided a platform for decision makers from the Federal, State and Local- Levels to outline their microgrids funding opportunities and deployment plans in a number of applications for increasing energy security and grid resiliency. The event brought commercial end-users and utilities together with leading renewable energy and microgrid developers, system integrators, energy storage companies, microgrid enabling technology companies and financiers to tackle the technical and financial challenges of developing microgrids for a myriad of markets.

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Silicon Valley Onsite Water Reuse Symposium

Sustainable Silicon Valley (SSV) hosted a Water Technology Symposium for On-site Water Reuse to convene policy makers, utility managers, developers and corporate facilities leaders. The Symposium focused upon driving wide-scale application of commercialized water tech solutions for capturing, storing, treating, monitoring and reusing water for nonpotable purposes. The Symposium’s goal was to identify and facilitate “shovel ready” pilot projects to help the public agencies develop supporting ordinances and guidelines.

Artemis Principal Laura Shenkar moderated the afternoon panel discussion: “Case Studies from the Viewpoint of Operators and Regulators.” The panel discussion focused on examples of already existing systems for onsite water recycling and reuse: how these systems really work, lessons learned from regulatory framework; financing and system costs; monitoring and compliance. The panel examined the roles of public agencies and developers/designers/contractors/facilities managers and discuss the decision criteria for selecting technology to implement on their sites.

Data Center Dynamics Internet Examines Water Risk in the Drought

A panel of industry leaders addressed the role of water risk to data center operations at the Data Center Dynamics 2015 Internet Conference, with a focus upon data centers in the Western US. The conference covered the full “mud to cloud” infrastructure stack and eco-system in the internet-facing, web-scale, third-platform, cloud data center, with 122 speakers in 70 sessions over two days.

Should there be a cause for concern about water use for data centers in drought/desert regions? If so, how is it best addressed? How much of data center operators community tracks and actively manages water use? How are measurement benchmarks like the Water Usage Efficiency (WUE) being adopted?